Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln

ISBN 10: 0252023285 / ISBN 13: 9780252023286

Published by University of Illinois Press, 1997

About this Item

pp. 864.

Seller Inventory # 26692034

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252023285
• ISBN 13: 9780252023286
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Winner of the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award

More than 600 letters and interviews providing information about Abraham Lincoln's prepolitical and prelegal careers are included in this volume, a priceless collection never before available in one place.

Women to whom Lincoln proposed marriage, political allies and adversaries, judges and fellow attorneys, longtime comrades, erstwhile friends--all speak out here in words first gathered by William H. Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, between 1865 and 1890. Historian David Herbert Donald has called Herndon's materials "the basic source for Abraham Lincoln's early years."

Some of those Herndon questioned were illiterate; others could read but barely write. Completion of this undertaking took the editors to three major collections for the mammoth task of transcribing documents that often were nearly illegible.

Invaluable to Lincoln scholars and intriguing to anyone curious about Lincoln and his times, the book includes an introduction, scholarly annotations, a registry of the informants, and a detailed topical index.

About the Author

Douglas L. Wilson is the director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College, in Galesburg, Illinois. Rodney O. Davis (d. 2019) was co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College. They are the coeditors of Lincoln's Confidant: The Life of Noah Brooks, Herndon on Lincoln: Letters, Herndon's Lincoln, and The Lincoln-Douglas Debates.